She stared as if not seeing it. Not hearing him.

“Yrene.”

Another tear rolled down her face, dripping onto her pale purple dress. Another.

“Are you hurt,” Chaol said hoarsely, his chair crunching over the pale white gravel of the garden.

“I’d forgotten,” she whispered, lips wobbling as she stared and stared at the pool and did not move her head. “What she looked like. Smelled like. I’d forgotten—her voice.”

His chest strained as her face crumpled. He hauled his chair beside her own but did not touch her.

Yrene said quietly, “We make oaths—to never take a life. She broke that oath the day the soldiers came. She had hidden a dagger in her dress. She saw the soldier grab me, and she … she leaped on him.” She closed her eyes. “She killed him. To buy me time to run. And I did. I left her. I ran, and I left her, and I watched … I watched from the forest as they built that fire. And I could hear her screaming and screaming—”

Her body shook.

“She was good,” Yrene whispered. “She was good and she was kind and she loved me.” She still did not wipe her tears. “And they took her away.”

The man he had served … he had taken her away.

Chaol asked softly, “Where did you go after that?”

Her trembling lessened. She wiped at her nose. “My mother had a cousin in the north of Fenharrow. I ran there. It took me two weeks, but I made it.”

At eleven. Fenharrow had been in the middle of conquest, and she’d made it—at eleven.

“They had a farm, and I worked there for six years. Pretended to be normal. Kept my head down. Healed with herbs when it wouldn’t raise suspicions. But it wasn’t enough. It … There was a hole. In me. I was unfinished.”

“So you came here?”

“I left. I meant to come here. I walked through Fenharrow. Through Oakwald. Then over … over the mountains …” Her voice broke into a whisper. “It took me six months, but I made it—to the port of Innish.”

He’d never heard of Innish. Likely in Melisande, if she’d crossed—

She’d crossed mountains.

This delicate woman beside him … She had crossed mountains to be here. Alone.

“I ran out of money for the crossing. So I stayed. I found work.”

He avoided the urge to look at the scar on her throat. To ask what manner of work—

“Most girls were on the streets. Innish was—is not a good place. But I found an inn by the docks and the owner hired me. I worked as a barmaid and a servant and … I stayed. I meant to only work for a month, but I stayed for a year. Let him take my money, my tips. Increase my rent. Put me in a room under the stairs. I had no money for the crossing, and I thought … I thought I would have to pay for my education here. I didn’t want to go without funds for tuition, so … I stayed.”

He studied her hands, now clutching each other tightly in her lap. Pictured them with a bucket and mop, with rags and dirty dishes. Pictured them raw and aching. Pictured the filthy inn and its inhabitants—what they must have seen and coveted when they beheld her.

“How did you make it here?”

Yrene’s mouth tightened, her tears fading. She loosed a breath. “It is a long story.”

“I have time to listen.”

But she shook her head again and at last looked at him. There was a … clarity to her face. Those eyes. And it did not falter as she said, “I know who gave you that wound.”

Chaol went wholly still.

The man who had taken away the mother she so deeply loved; the man who had sent her fleeing across the world.

He managed to nod.

“The old king,” Yrene breathed, studying the pool again. “He was—he was possessed, too?”

The words were hardly more than a whisper, barely audible even to him.

“Yes,” he managed to say. “For decades. I—I’m sorry I did not tell you. We’ve deemed that information … sensitive.”

“For what it might mean about the suitability of your new king.”

“Yes, and open the door to questions that are best kept unasked.”

Yrene rubbed at her chest, her face haunted and bleak. “No wonder my magic recoils so.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. It was all he could think to offer.

Those eyes slid to him, any lingering fog clouding them clearing away. “It gives me further reason to fight it. To wipe away that last stain of him—of it forever. Just now, it was waiting for me. Laughing at me again. I managed to get to you, but then the darkness around you was too thick. It had made a … shell. I could see it—everything it showed you. Your memories, and his.” She rubbed her face. “I knew then. What it was—who gave you the wound. And I saw what it was doing to you, and all I could think to stop it, to blast it away …” She pursed her lips, as if they might start trembling again.

“A bit of goodness,” he finished for her. “A memory of light and goodness.” He didn’t have the words to convey his gratitude for it, for what it must have been like to offer up that memory of her mother against the demon that had destroyed her.

Yrene seemed to read his thoughts, and said, “I am glad it was a memory of her that beat the darkness back a little further.”

His throat tightened, and he swallowed hard.

“I saw your memory,” Yrene said quietly. “The—man. Your father.”

“He is a bastard of the finest caliber.”

“It was not your fault. None of it.”

He refrained from commenting otherwise.

“You were lucky that you did not fracture your skull,” she said, scanning his brow. The scar just barely visible, covered by his hair.

“I’m sure my father considers it otherwise.”

Darkness flashed in her eyes. Yrene only said, “You deserved better.”

The words hit something sore and festering—something he had locked up and not examined for a long, long time. “Thank you,” he managed to say.

They sat in silence for long minutes. “What time is it?” he asked after a while.

“Three,” she said.

Chaol started.

But Yrene’s eyes went right to his legs. His feet. How they had moved with him.

Her mouth opened silently.

“Another bit of progress,” he said.

She smiled—subdued, but … it was real. Not like the one she’d plastered on her face hours and hours ago. When she’d walked into his bedroom and found him there with Nesryn, and he’d felt the world slipping out from under him at the expression on her face. And when she had refused to meet his stare, when she’d wrapped her arms around herself …

He wished he’d been able to walk. So she could see him crawl toward her.

He didn’t know why. Why he felt like the lowest sort of low. Why he’d barely been able to look at Nesryn. Though he knew Nesryn was too observant not to be aware. It had been the unspoken agreement between them last night—silence on the subject. And that reason alone …

Yrene poked at his bare foot. “Do you feel this?”

Chaol curled his toes. “Yes.”

She frowned. “Am I pushing hard or soft?”

She ground her finger in.

“Hard,” he grunted.

Her finger lightened. “And now?”

“Soft.”

She repeated the test on the other foot. Touched each of his toes.

“I think,” she observed, “I’ve pushed it down—to somewhere in the middle of your back. The mark is still the same, but it feels like …” She shook her head. “I can’t explain it.”

“You don’t need to.”

It had been her joy—the undiluted joy of that memory—that had won him that bit of movement. What she’d opened up, given up, to push back the stain of that wound.

“I’m starving,” Chaol said, nudging her with an elbow. “Will you eat with me?”

And to his surprise, she said yes.

24

Nesryn knew.

She knew it hadn’t been mere interest that had prompted Chaol to ask her to talk to him last night, but guilt.